O'Hare controllers air taxiway worries

Runway crash danger alleged

December 25, 2001|By Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune transportation reporter.

As critics begin examining details of the proposed O'Hare International Airport modernization, some of the greatest concerns are coming from an unlikely source: air traffic controllers who say the plan could increase the potential for accidents.

Specifically, the controllers, among the most ardent supporters of new runways at O'Hare, don't like the idea that most planes would be required to taxi across runways to get to and from the passenger terminals.

"The cardinal rule in designing airfields is that if at all possible, you avoid taxiing planes across active runways," said Craig Burzych, a veteran O'Hare controller who is president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union at the airport.

"Los Angeles [International Airport] has a parallel runway layout similar to what Chicago is proposing, and LAX led the country in runway incursions [between 1997 and 2000]. Dallas-Ft. Worth [International Airport] has had two close calls this year alone--barely missed accidents--due in part to parallel runways," Burzych said.

Replacing O'Hare's maze of crisscrossing runways with parallel ones is a key element of Mayor Richard Daley's plan to expand the airport. The notion is that six runways stacked side by side could be used simultaneously, four for arrivals and two for departures, dramatically increasing the number of flights the airport could handle.

The plan has been embraced in a number of corners, from the airlines to Gov. George Ryan, who agreed to the deal earlier this month in return for concessions from Daley on support for a south suburban airport and keeping Meigs Field open.

Before construction can begin, however, the plan still faces a number of hurdles from legal challenges to federal environmental reviews. And backers of the project say critiques such as those offered by the controllers are premature.

"It's too early to get carried away," said Capt. Herb Hunter, a spokesman for United Airlines pilots. "I don't know what the final plan will end up being, but we are happy because the proposal will help reduce delays and it gives pilots added flexibility."

Proposal to be refined

Chicago aviation officials defended the $6.6 billion O'Hare expansion plan as workable, but conceded changes are inevitable in a project of such magnitude.

"It's a concept plan and it will be refined," said John Harris, the city's first deputy aviation commissioner who is heading up the project. He said the proposed configuration for O'Hare is consistent with the layout at the country's newer airports, from Atlanta to Denver--and even similar to Ryan's proposed third Chicago-area airport near Peotone.

The controllers agreed that if done right, parallel runways would be a great improvement over the tangle of intersecting runways at O'Hare now.

At Dallas' sprawling airfield, for example, planes are routinely staged at various points on taxiways near active runways until departing and arriving aircraft have cleared out, then the waiting planes cross the runway simultaneously in conga-line fashion.

Yet despite the focus on minimizing potential conflicts, runway incursions--collisions or near collisions--increased from 292 in 1997 to 431 in 2000 at U.S. airports, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. During that period, Los Angeles led the nation with 33 runway incursions. O'Hare ranked 13th with 17 incursions.

O'Hare's controllers said they accept the potential perils of parallel runways as a necessary part of increasing efficiency. But the controllers said they want the city to take their feedback into account before getting too far along in developing Daley's general concept for O'Hare into a detailed airfield layout plan.

The layout will be included in an airport master plan to be submitted to the FAA next year or in 2003.

The controllers also think some of the runways outlined in the plan are needlessly long, eating up precious real estate that could instead be used for taxiways to route aircraft around runways. And they questioned Chicago's decision to keep two existing diagonal runways that they said would be rarely used and are incompatible with the six east-west runways the city plans to build to nearly double O'Hare's flight capacity.

Hunter, the United pilots spokesman, said, however, that he didn't necessarily believe the runways should be shortened even if that would make it easier to direct aircraft around runways rather than across them.

"You are going to have a hard time persuading any pilots to complain about too long runways," he said. "In the event of a catastrophic emergency before becoming airborne, the more runway you have to make a decision, the better."